from the exponential-thinking dept

Former sheriff (and ongoing blight on the state of Arizona) Joe Arpaio has decided to sue a handful of new agencies for defamation. The slightly-overwrought press release from FreedomWatch (and founder Larry Klayman) alleges defamation per se on the part of CNN, the Huffington Post, and Rolling Stone and claims these three publications caused $300.5 million in damage to Arpaio's otherwise impeccable reputation.

"It's time that someone stood up to the Left's 'Fake News' media, which is bent on destroying anyone who is a supporter of the president and in particular Sheriff Arpaio. My client will not be bullied by the likes of Jeff Zucker, Chris Cuomo, the Huffington Post, and Rolling Stone, as he alone has the courage to stand up for not just himself, the President of the United States but also all fair-minded and ethical Americans."

Ok, then. If you think the lawsuit itself is a much more buttoned-down affair, then you haven't read a Larry Klayman complaint before. It starts with the usual stuff establishing standing before getting down to the focus of the complaint. The alleged defamation committed by all three defendants is referring to Joe Arpaio as a "convicted felon" when his only conviction was for a misdemeanor. Rolling Stone issued a correction but the other two defendants haven't corrected their original misstatements. Hence the lawsuit -- Arpaio and Klayman's public attempt to stick it to the "Left Fake News media."

Here's why Arpaio feels he's owed $300 million for a couple of standing misstatements. Running for an open US Senate seat must pay really well.

Plaintiff Arpaio’s chances and prospects of election to the U.S. Senate in 2020 have been severely harmed by the publication of false and fraudulent facts in the Defamatory Article. This also harms Plaintiff financially, as his chances of obtaining funding from the Republican establishment and donors for the 2020 election have been damaged by the publication of false and fraudulent representations in the Defamatory Article.

Given the pardon issued to him by the Republican president currently in office, it seems unlikely his reputation suffered any damage from these incorrect statements. If anything, it only further damaged the reputation of these publications, at least in the eyes of Arpaio supporters (which presumably includes a sizeable percentage of Republican voters).

Arpaio managed to survive hundreds of self-inflicted reputational wounds during his years as sheriff, so it's a bit of a stretch to claim three "fake news" sources have done anything more than further cement his reputation as a martyr to the cause.

Arpaio also claims this has damaged his reputation within the law enforcement community. Again, it seems unlikely to have budged the needle there either. Law enforcement agencies tend to view the press with the same suspicion Arpaio does and probably agree the ex-sheriff was persecuted rather than prosecuted.

Nevertheless, there's potential money to be made. And Klayman, representing Arpaio, isn't above using a federal lawsuit as soapbox. At times, the complaint [PDF] more resembles a transcript of a YouTube monologue than a statement of facts and allegations.

Defendants are aware of these prospective business relationships and thus, given their malice and leftist enmity of Arpaio sought to destroy them with the publication of the subject Defamatory Publications.

Defendants published the Defamatory Publications to influence the RNC, the RNCC and affiliated political action committee and persons, and other donors, to withhold funding for Plaintiff Arpaio’s 2020 political campaign by smearing and destroying his reputation and standing in his law enforcement, government and political community.

Plaintiff Arpaio has been harmed as to his reputation as “America’s Toughest Sheriff” and financially by the publication of the Defamatory Article.

[insert fire emoji]

While it's true publications got the facts wrong, Joe Arpaio is an extremely public person. This raises the bar he must meet to succeed in this lawsuit. While the publications may have been careless in incorrectly noting the level of the offense that Arpaio was convicted for, that's not nearly enough to secure a favorable ruling.

Arpaio's reputation has been leaking hit points for a long time, but it has never affected his popularity with his presumed voter base. The rest of America may hate "America's Toughest Sheriff," but his supporters can't get enough of him. Three mistakes by three publications is unlikely to have caused $300-worth of damage to the ex-sheriff's Senatorial chances, much less $300 million. Some people are just defamation-proof and it's a good bet Joseph Arpaio is one of them.

Arpaio's welcome to waste the court's time and his own money claiming the "fake news" media dinged his rust bucket of a reputation, but he's not going to be happy when the court apprises him of the above facts. The problem is these three publications will have to spend some money of their own defending against a seriously weak lawsuit. With the DC circuit having decided it doesn't need to apply the District's own anti-SLAPP law to federal cases, it's likely the defendants will be stuck with covering their own costs, even if they prevail. On top of that they'll have to deal with an opposing counsel with a penchant for pissing off judges and treating the courtroom like a heated Periscope broadcast. It's a waste of everyone's time and money but Klayman's. I'm pretty sure he didn't take this on contingency.

from the no-carrots-here,-buddy,-just-a-big-borrowed-stick dept

A Pennsylvania dentist clinic has manage to destroy its reputation with a tactic it thought might actually drum up some business. Letters sent to parents by Smiles 4 Keeps suggested the dental clinic would get law enforcement involved if the company didn't see an uptick in new appointments.

Here are the relevant parts of the heavy-handed threats Smiles 4 Keeps has been sending to parents.

According to law, failure to bring your child for dental care is considered neglect. Pennsylvania Act 31 states that health care providers must report your failure to bring your child to the dentist for evaluation and care… Smiles 4 Keeps has not report [sic] your child's outstanding dental treatment, as of yet.

[...]

To keep your child as healthy as possible and avoid a report to state authorities, please call Smiles 4 Keeps immediately to schedule a treatment appointment within the next 30 days.

First off, the statute cited only requires entities designated by the state as "mandatory reporters" of child abuse (which includes a very long list of public and private entities) to take continuing education classes on identifying and reporting child abuse. It does not require a dental clinic to turn parents in for not keeping their kids on a tight preventative maintenance schedule. There's a whole lot of distance between a few missed dental appointments to things the state considered to be possible evidence of neglect or abuse.

This letter is thuggery that hopes to prey on the ignorant. It threatens parents with being reported to the state as child abusers, even though the clinic has nothing more than a few missed checkups to offer as evidence. Abusing a child abuse law to increase office visits is an abhorrent tactic, one that indicates the clinic cares more about steady income than actually looking out for abused children.

If this bogus reporting does start occurring, it will be a tremendous burden on parents. It will likely have zero negative effect on the clinic, outside of its swift reputational decline. The mandated reporting law immunizes reporting entities from civil or criminal penalties. But the reporting must be done in good faith to qualify for this immunity, and Smiles 4 Keep's threats are definitely a detriment to any good faith claims it might try to raise. It could certainly be argued this letter shows any reporting of parents by this clinic was done to increase office visits (and income), rather than because employees actually witnessed signs of abuse.

No one at the local dentists' offices would agree to talk on camera but an email from a corporate spokesperson writes, "It's been a tough week" and that the letter has been, "grossly misinterpreted."

The second says the letter that was "grossly misinterpreted" by recipients and commenters will be rewritten. Seems like it shouldn't need to be overhauled if it's just a matter of everyone reading the right words but drawing the wrong conclusions.

A Smiles 4 Keeps spokesperson says she does not know how many of these letters were sent but that it reported 17 cases of neglect last year. She adds that the company plans to rewrite the letter because of feedback from around the country.

Hopefully, the new letter will only say what letters from thousands of dental providers say: "Hey, you skipped a checkup. Can we set one up for you soon to get you back on track?" There's no need to bring the law into it. Dental providers are required to report possible abuse, but this reporting requirement should not be used to blackmail people into spending more money at your place of business. Future letters should make zero references to the mandated reporting statute because it has zero relevance to the task at hand: informing customers of periodic checkups and cleanings and leaving it to the customers to set up appointments.

from the consume-defication,-bob dept

Thought the whole Bob Murray / John Oliver story was over with the judge making it clear Murray had no case and preparing to dismiss the whole thing? It appears that Murray cannot let it go. As first spotted by YouTubing lawyer Leonard French, Murray (not his lawyers) sent the judge a letter whining about the whole thing (check out French's video for a wonderful dramatic reading of the letter):

Or just go check out the letter yourself (kudos to French for getting the document and posting it and doing the dramatic read, shame on the West Virginia courts for not having web-accessible electronic records, and a plea to French to stop putting lame ugly watermarks on public documents). Of course, the reason the letter is public is that (1) parties are not supposed to talk to the judge about their case without telling the other side, and (2) parties are not supposed to communicate with the court directly, rather than via their attorneys. And, thus, the judge added Murray's letter to the docket in the case, along with a bit of a benchslap:

This date the Court received the attached unsolicited missive from the Plaintiff, Robert E. Murray. As it does not appear Mr. Murray forwarded copies of the same to Defense Counsel, pursuant to Rule 2.9(B) of the West Virginia Rules of Judicial Conduct, the Court has copied and enclosed the correspondence herein and filed the original in the Court's file.

Mr. Murray's letter is an improper ex parte communication with the Court, therefore the request to reconsider the Court's decision cannot and will not be entertained.

The Court respectfully requests Plaintiffs' Counsel to advise Mr. Murray against future ex parte correspondence which could result in sanctions against the Plaintiffs in this matter.

In other words: don't do this shit, Bob.

But, of course, the real joy is in Murray's letter itself, which is absolutely hilarious. It starts off talking about how disappointed he is in the ruling, which, sure, is understandable but it's totally improper to send a personal letter to the judge about it.

We are deeply disappointed to learn that you intend to dismiss our lawsuit against Home Box Office, Inc., Time Warner Inc., Mr. John Oliver, and others (collectively "Defendants"). We will appeal that decision in due course.

Right. If you (stupidly) decide to appeal this, your lawyers should appeal it in due course. Reaching out to the judge on your own is... not part of that "due course."

The jobs of our 6,000 coal miners depend on me and my reputation.

Right, then maybe you shouldn't have done a bunch of things that caused John Oliver and many others to mock you. And those mockable things include suing John Oliver for mocking you in the first place. Because the "harm" to your reputation was caused by you -- not John Oliver. There is no right in this country not to have people mock you, and considering how frequently Murray seems to be flag waving about how proud he is to be an American, he might want to take some time to read the First Amendment of the Constitution.

So, if 6,000 coal miner jobs really depend on your reputation (which, also: citation needed), then perhaps the first thing you should do is improve your reputation (pro tip: sending a hilariously dumb letter to the judge in your case does the opposite of improving your reputation).

My name is on the Company, and I am the one who our 140 lenders, our utility customers, the regulators, and the public look to in order to keep these jobs. You have enabled the Defendants to further destroy our miners' families. We write you today to inform you of the continued personal attack and harassment by the Defendants in this case.

If your lenders and customers bail because John Oliver made fun of you, perhaps there are larger issues at play. And, of course, Murray presents no evidence that any such lender, customer, regulator or anyone else has done anything to the company as a result of Oliver's story, or the ruling in this case.

As for "continued personal attacks," again I have to point you to the First Amendment. Personal attacks are protected. Making fun of you is protected. Telling you to "eat shit, Bob" is protected. This isn't even close. Telling the court that just told you such things are protected that such "personal attacks" have continued is not a compelling argument. It suggests someone is acting like a sore loser without even understanding why he lost.

Just because you feel bad, Bob, it doesn't make it illegal.

Indeed, just yesterday, the Defendants aired worldwide the enclose attack on the undersigned and our Compay, whereby John Oliver taunted us, once again, stating "Eat Sh-t Bob" and announcing that, once your order is issued, he will "gloat" and he will be "rubbing it in the face of the person that lost over and over again."

Oooooooooooooh. He taunted you again. I mean, that's positively Pythonesque, and we all know how King Arthur v. French Knight turned out, don't we?

This clearly demonstrates the vindictiveness and intentional destruction that the Defendants have caused.

No. It means that you were mocked, had such thin skin that you sued in a case that you quickly lost, and thus were called out on filing a bad case (pretty mildly too, frankly). It doesn't show "vindictiveness." You know what shows vindictiveness? Suing a television comedian for reporting on your antics because you don't like how you were portrayed. And, really, if anyone's trying to "destroy" anyone, I think that honor must go to the person who sued someone for making fun of them, demanding "general damages," "special damages," "punitive damages," "attorneys' fees" and "a permanent injunction" against the person who made fun of you.

It shows that these attacks will continue in perpetuity, as a result of your order.

No, not as a result of the order. As a result of you doing silly, mockable things up to and including filing a lawsuit over someone expressing their opinion that things you did were silly and mockable.

I am a dying old man, but our employees will pay for your decision.

Nice baseless appeal to emotion. But, of course, if you're dying, then how does your earlier statement about how all these employees relying on your reputation for their jobs make sense? Does that mean once you die they're all out of work? If so, isn't that a bigger threat to their jobs?

Further, since your ruling, we have been subjected to multiple insulting and threatening email and telephone messages, including these: "BOB, KISS MY A--"' "Hey Bob, I guess John Oliver f---ed you in your a--. You are a real evil piece of s--t"; "Consume defecation, Bob."; "What an old and selfish c--t of a human being. You and your industry are no longer relevant and the entire world knows it."; "Congratulations on having HBO make you look like a big fat lardass loser in court. Idiot.;" And "Ha ha you fat pig, you lost your lawsuit... burn in hell dr. evil." This is a very small sampling of the flagrant and extremely damaging personal attacks that we continue to receive on a daily basis.

First off, Bob, thank you for sharing those. We never would have seen them otherwise. I'm assuming that Bob self-censored the dashes in the curse words, which is nice of him. But, really, the "consume defecation, Bob" statement is a really tremendous work of art.

Oh, and Bob, defamation is not "people made fun of me and I'm sad." It requires false statements of fact made with actual malice. That's not what's happening. And you don't even bother to allege that's what's happening, because it isn't.

Accordingly, we respectfully request that you reconsider your decision to dismiss this lawsuit and allow this case to proceed on the merits.

What merits? There are no merits, which is what the judge has already made clear.

Indeed, this lawsuit is extremely important to our employees, who rely on Murray Energy and me for their continued livelihoods, and to our lenders, customers, and suppliers who depend on our integrity and performance. We cannot sit idly and allow our jobs and livelihoods to be destroyed by the cruel and baseless attacks of these defendants.

Wait. This lawsuit -- in which a key part is about John Oliver quoting one of your employees writing "Eat Shit Bob" on a bonus check he was voiding over safety concerns -- is "important" to your employees? You sure about that, Bob?

And, again, it's not the people making fun of you that's "destroying livelihoods."

“Other than the fact that Bob Murray’s case against John Oliver is a ridiculous attempt to quell speech by abusing our legal system, it really is the gift that keeps on giving. With the disdain Mr. Murray has shown for our constitution and our legal system, I’m not surprised that he would also improperly try to influence a judge in this way (or with such a hilarious letter). Unfortunately for Bob, everything John Oliver has said on his show was and continues to be protected speech. It is, in fact, legal for anyone to say, ‘Consume defecation, Bob.'”

from the did-streisand-have-a-mullet dept

We already know how bizarre defamation rules in Australia can be, but apparently even they have some limits down under. A teenager named Ali Ziggi Mosslmani (who goes by "Ziggy") got a bit of internet fame last year when a photographer, Jeremy Nool, took a picture of him at a birthday party and posted it to his Facebook page. People noticed Ziggy's somewhat unique mullet haircut, and the picture started to go viral:

As you can see, it has over 10,000 likes, almost 25,000 comments and over 1,500 shares. As these things tend to do, it also inspired people to create new meme images out of it. Here are just a few:

All a bit of internet fun. But, apparently, Ziggy had a bit of trouble taking the joke and went off and sued three Australian media outlets for mocking his haircut. As we've seen in other Australian defamation cases, it appears that the claims relied on this concept of "imputations" -- as in what the images "impute" about the individual. However, Ziggy and his lawyers basically tried to claim that the imputations of the memed images were basically the end of the world. And the judge didn't buy it.

Judge Gibson said Mosslmani’s case was “overpleaded” and appeared to be designed to “claim as many imputations as possible while simultaneously avoiding a defence of honest opinion or justification”.

The only imputation the judge allowed was that “the plaintiff is a ridiculous person because he wears a controversial haircut”.

“The plaintiff is entitled to plead an imputation of condition – namely being a ridiculous person for having such a hairstyle – as well as an imputation amounting to an act. This imputation is reasonably capable of being conveyed and will go to the jury”.

The imputation that he was “hideously ugly” was rejected despite the headline saying the complainant had a “ridiculous haircut” .

I'm still confused as to how an "imputation" that someone "is a ridiculous person because he wears a controversial haircut" could possibly be defamation, but, hey, that's Australia.

District Court judge Judith Gibson mulled over the evidence and declared that Mosslmani’s Texas tailgate “generated a great deal of interest on the internet, most of it humorous.”

In other words, yes, the judge found the memes funny herself. She also noted that all the "likes" on the Facebook post suggested that people liked the image, rather than that they were mocking Ziggy.

“However, the publication goes on to say that the photograph has generated 11,415 comments, 10,000 likes and 1.7m views, which suggests that the hairstyle has its fans and opponents, but is not indicative of ugliness; to the contrary, 10,000 people pressed the ‘like’ button,” Judge Gibson said.

Meanwhile, this lawsuit and ruling is creating something of a Streisand Effect. Before this, it seemed that the meme was mostly known in Australia, but thanks to the lawsuit, it's going global. I hadn't seen it prior to the lawsuit, but now it's everywhere. And the photographer who took the image, Nool, seems to be having a lot of fun with it. He got to go on an Australian morning TV program and has been happily sharing the meme'd images himself:

from the unhappy-company-v-unhappy-customers dept

Superior Moving and Storage of Pompano Beach, Florida, has a problem. Or rather, several problems. One problem is that Yelp has issued a warning about its review page, noting that it has seen some suspicious activity ["a number of positive reviews from the same IP address"] that suggest an unethical effort to skew its rating.

Local 10 News viewer Scott Hooton claims he was sued for posting a negative online business review.

The Pompano Beach-based moving company behind the suit claims the statements made online were false and have sued Hooton for damages related to defamation.

[...]

"They sued me. Served papers right here on this porch," Hooton said.

The suit is seeking damages of excess of $15,000 for defamation related to what the company calls "false statements" made by Hooton in his online posting.

Where this dollar amount comes from isn't clear. It's not listed in the lawsuit's demands.

However, this sort of thing isn't surprising. Many companies have tried this tactic. Most have been unsuccessful. Then there's this:

"His lawyer offered to settle," Hooton said.

This indicates the company's claims aren't quite as solid as it would like them to be. If your case is strong, you generally don't chase filings with settlement offers. Unless you're doing them in bulk

Superior Moving has filed five libel suits against unhappy customers in the past five months, with three of those coming in the space of three weeks.

The company is likely on unsure footing here, as it has spent much more of its time in the Broward County courthouse as a defendant. Since 1998, Superior Moving has been taken to court 31 times for everything from small claims to unpaid debts/violated contracts to fraud.

Many of the small claims cases are due to damages to belongings, homes and vehicles belonging to customers. As you can probably guess, many of the complaints being called defamatory also deal with the same sort of damages.

But do the lawsuits have any merit? Well, we could ask David S. Weinstein, Local 10's "legal expert…"

"The First Amendment protects free speech, but it protects truthful free speech. You still can't yell 'fire' in a crowded theater if there's no fire in a crowded theater."

9. Pursuant to the Contract, Superior was ready willing and able to pick up the Defendant's furniture and other items, as outlined on the estimate, however, Defendant Hooton, without cause terminated the contract for the move.

10. Despite the fact that Superior was ready, willing and able to fulfill its contract, the Defendant has been defaming Superior in online postings. Defendant published the following false statements about Superior: "They get you on the hook for a low price without completely understanding the work. Then they apply additional charges until it's unbearable."

11. Each and every one of the above statements is false.

And here are the damages claimed, one of which is "we had to hire a lawyer to file these lawsuits."

12. Superior has been required to retain the undersigned counsel to represent it in this action and is obligated to pay said counsel a reasonable fee for services rendered.

13. As a direct and proximate result of the foregoing false statements, Superior has been damaged.

The claims listed above are similar to those in the other defamation lawsuits, with the only difference being the direct quotes taken from the defendants' Yelp/BBB reviews and complaints. Hooton has already responded to Superior's complaint, denying the allegations and pointing out that he never "executed" the documents Superior said he did. Rather, he backed out of the contract when the add-ons moved the cost well above the original estimate.

Hooton's comments are obviously his opinion of the estimate process, which he viewed as bait-and-switch. It would be a stretch to call his statements defamatory, and even more of stretch to claim they caused recoupable damage.

Other suits may have (slightly) more merit that Hooton's, as other Yelp reviewers were a bit more creative in their expressions of dissatisfaction. The interesting thing is that all the suits target negative reviews at Yelp. These would be the same negative reviews that currently greet people surfing to Superior Moving's Yelp page.

If the intention of the lawsuits was to pressure reviewers to kill their negative Yelp reviews, it hasn't worked. Superior seems to have a valid complaint about Yelp itself, and yet it has made no visible effort to direct its legal efforts towards that company.

"Superior Moving & Storage was a paid advertiser with Yelp for many years. During those paid years, he maintained a "5 Star Rating" while paying substantial fees for advertisement and web presence," Manes said.

"When my client decided to discontinue advertising and maintaining a Yelp Page due to consistent increases in the fees and costs imposed on his business by Yelp, his rating suddenly dropped. Shortly after, Yelp began removing many of his 5 Star reviews stating they had violated Yelp's terms, and only publishing negative reviews."

Of course, this could just be the company's highly-subjective view of the current situation, in which certain normal Yelp actions are viewed as conspiratorial and correlative. Even if Superior's claims are true, it would be a long, expensive fight to prove it. Superior seems to realize this battle isn't worth fighting, but it's applying the same sort of pressure on its critics by filing these lawsuits -- implying an expensive legal battle awaits if the defendants aren't willing to settle.

Companies should be able to defend their reputations, but using the legal system to do it isn't the best tactic. Superior may be concerned that Yelp's review page will scare off potential customers. But acquiring a reputation as a company that will sue people for posting negative reviews can have an equally adverse effect.

from the can't-make-this-stuff-up dept

And here's another one from the Sony archives, this time noticed by Parker Higgins. It involves an email thread between Sony TV's Chief Marketing Officer Sheraton Kalouria and the company's top intellectual property lawyer Leah Weil (with top TV exec Steve Mosko included in the cc: field). In the email, they're discussing a new "reputational initiative" by the MPAA. From other emails, it appears that the MPAA finally realized that its reputation was toxic, and figured that rather than, maybe, figuring out why that is, it would put together a marketing campaign to improve the public's view of the MPAA. Here were the four goals of the campaign:

Fill the knowledge gap about our industry

Change consumer perceptions

Claim our rightful position as innovators

Reframe our consumer message in a positive tone

I note that "stop suing our customers and biggest fans" and "stop trying to censor parts of the web or destroy innovations that challenge our business model" didn't make the list. That's too bad, as either of those steps might actually, you know, help improve the MPAA's reputation.

But the really amazing thing about the campaign? Apparently at least some of the video involved unauthroized copying of content from... Google. The same Google that the MPAA and studios had dubbed "Goliath" and who they were hell bent on destroying because of the misleading belief that Google helped people infringe on their copyrights. Here was Kalouria's email to Weil:

Also, I was somewhat horrified that their creative shop used footage from Google commercials in their “Swipe-o-matic”. I kid you not…some of those scenes of people being “moved” by movies are from a current Google campaign...!

Weil only responded with a single word:

Yikes!!!

Yes. If you've been following along with the home game, you know that the MPAA is really, really against copyright infringement (or at least that's what it would have you believe). And it believes that Google is the single-biggest problem in the copyright world these days. And yet, when it's time for the MPAA to put together some of its own propaganda to put some spit and polish on its down in the dumps reputation, what does it do? Make use of Google's footage and pretend that the people being "moved" are actually being moved by the MPAA's movies.

Apparently, infringing on the works of others is okay for the MPAA when it does it itself. And that's leaving out the extreme irony of using Google's ad footage as well. It's unclear if this MPAA film ever saw the light of day, but it would be fascinating to see if anyone has it...

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

Some crowdfunding projects are really impressive and have gotten a lot of attention and praise that is well deserved. However, there are also quite a few projects that haven't quite lived up to their promise. It's disappointing to say the least when a project gets over a million bucks and still fails to deliver a working product to its backers. Some backers get upset when their favorite crowdfunded project sells out to Facebook. How can companies like Kickstarter and Indiegogo and the like deal with these problems? There might be escrow schemes or insurance policies that could help, but in the end, it seems like buyer beware is the ultimate answer. Here are just a few links on this situation of dealing with crowdfunding disappointments and outright scams.

from the now-that-that's-been-solved... dept

Comcast is notorious for its terrible customer service. It's not hard to find story after story after story after story after story after story about Comcast's customer service failures. And those are all just from the past three months (and we skip over plenty of those stories as well). It's gone on for years. It's why Comcast keeps winning the Worst Company in America award.

Every time these things happen, some top exec from Comcast comes out of his or her cave to tell us that these things are unacceptable and will change. As Karl Bode at Broadband Reports sums up, it's becoming like clockwork:

The latest seemingly bi-annual promise to fix their abysmal customer satisfaction ratings comes via Comcast Executive VP Neil Smit, who in a blog post informs us that Comcast has hired Charlie Herrin to be the company's new "Senior VP of Customer Experience." Herrin will, according to Smit, "reimagine the customer experience and ensure that we are delighting our customers at each touch point."

"Over the last few years, we’ve been incredibly focused on product innovation and delivering great content and technology experiences," insists Smit. "But this is only one half of the customer experience equation. The other half is operational excellence in how we deliver service. The way we interact with our customers – on the phone, online, in their homes – is as important to our success as the technology we provide."

That's an interesting rewriting of history. The reality, of course, is that while Comcast has improved speeds, it's spent an awful lot of its time over the past few years on buying up companies and getting regulatory approval to grow its monopolistic appetite. And, it seems noteworthy that each time Comcast tries to do a big merger, part of the rationale presented is that this will somehow improve the customer experience. And yet, now they're more or less admitting that was never actually true.

Furthermore, what giant monopolistic provider of service do you know that has a reputation for providing good customer service? Competition leads to both innovations and good customer service, and that's not something that Comcast really faces anywhere these days. A VP of Customer Experience isn't likely to change that

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

If you've been reading Techdirt for a while, you probably know that we're not big fans of this myth: "If you're not paying for the product, you are the product." Regardless of whether or not you pay for something, some companies will still treat their customers horribly. Likewise, there are also some corporations that try to treat customers (or users) with respect without expectation of payment for the favor. That said, it's easy to make mistakes that get mis-interpreted when it comes to analyzing consumer behavior. An unintentional email message to a targeted (or even un-targeted) group of customers can enrage a whole community. Consumer data is available to a lot of companies, but it might be wise for these companies to tread lightly with their data scientists. Here are just a few cases that data miners might want to check out.

from the coincidence-or-something-nastier? dept

KlearGear is on the move! Not content to simply dodge judgments against it by pretending to be a French corporation rather than the variety of remailers it appears to be, KlearGear has revamped its website and given itself a brand new address.

Gone are the legal threats claiming it has the "right" to charge customers $3,500 for bad reviews. Also gone are the claims that it will fight every chargeback to the death with a variety of tactics including reporting unhappy customers to a scam site shut down by the Federal Trade Commission and an ever-escalating number of punitive charges.

Zbiddy seems to have nearly as many pissed-off customers as KlearGear. Winning bidders report their items never arrived. Many more complaints call out the company for charging their credit cards $60-99 immediately after registration, without them ever placing a bid or winning an auction. Like other equally abysmal auction sites, Zbiddy lures people in with the chance to obtain stuff for low, low prices. And like other auction sites, it requires a credit card before a potential bidder can do anything. And (again) like equally shady sites, Zbiddy sells packages of bids, without which bidders can't even participate in auctions.

And, like KlearGear, customer service is nearly nonexistent and many, many people have complained about spending money but receiving nothing in return. At this point, Zbiddy's reputation is so thoroughly trashed that it has sought to hide its name behind a slightly less sketchy penny auction site, BeezId.

It appears that whoever actually runs KlearGear (whether it's Havaco Direct, Chenal Media or French company Descoteaux Boutiques) may have a fistful of scammy companies under his purview -- or at least has the dubious fortune of choosing the same remailer address as Zbiddy. KlearGear may be completely unrelated to Zbiddy, but customers of both suffer from the same form of abuse: not receiving the products they've paid for.

1. The supposed address of Descoteaux Boutiques is also found on KlearGear's website. However, that address links back to an outsourcing firm (7-Conseil), one that also seems incredibly light on verifiable details. Who's behind it isn't exactly clear, but nowhere in the details will you find Vic Mathieu or the supposed company he claims owns KlearGear.

2. Placing an order with KlearGear now routes you through Yahoo!. On the shopping cart pages, one of KlearGear's lies resurfaces.

KlearGear very definitely does not have an A+ rating with the Better Business Bureau "as of 8/23/14." (This is a very recent update. The sitemap xml shows every page was last updated on 8/22.) Western Michigan's BBB notes that KlearGear isn't even accredited, thanks to its earlier false claims about its BBB rating. San Antonio's BBB (dating back to when KlearGear pretended to be located there) has very generously given KlearGear a "no rating." Delaware's BBB doesn't even have KlearGear listed at its fake local address. So, once again, KlearGear is lying about its rating, but it's hiding it from its critics and using it during the ordering process to give potential customers the completely false assurance that it's a trustworthy company.

3. KlearGear is hiring. And the email address to contact is wow@kleargear.com, which also doubles as its "Customer Care Center" email address, so don't expect to hear back on your application any time soon.

KlearGear -- whoever's actually behind it -- still owes the couple, whose credit it wrecked, over $300,000. But it appears it's well-practiced in the art of hiding behind meaningless names, nonexistent media contact people and a host of shell companies that exist solely as mailboxes. 7-Conseils, the French company that is actually registered at the address listed on KlearGear's site, has been in existence since 2008, but its website still claims to be under construction. The longer-running Chenal name also has a bare-bones website and a bogus address. Vic Mathieu's grandstanding at Ars Technica did little more than show that whoever are running the shop (and whatever their actual names are), have nothing but contempt for every person they've screwed. KlearGear may not be associated with the scammy Zbiddy, but both entities deploy the same tactics (bogus charges, confrontational response to criticism) and have the same abysmal customer service record. What may look like nothing but a coincidence may actually be just another shady operation by the crooked braintrust behind KlearGear.